Our posts tagged Interview or questionnaire

Scrum Master Hiring: Demand Creates Supply and the Job Market for Agile Practitioners is No Exception

Maybe, “Agile” in general is a management fad and not trend at the moment. But what we can say for sure is that Scrum has become very popular for software development purposes. A seasoned Scrum master is nowadays in high demand. And that demand causes the market-entry of new professionals from other project management branches, probably believing that reading one or two Scrum books will be sufficient.

If you are looking to fill a position for a Scrum master (or agile coach) in your organization, you may find the following 38+9 interview questions useful to identify the right candidate. They are derived from my ten years of practical experience with XP as well as Scrum, serving both as Product owner and Scrum master as well as interviewing dozens of Scrum master candidates on behalf of my clients.

This second publication in the Hands-on Agile Fieldnotes series provides 42 questions and answers for the Scrum Product Owner interview.

Co-authored with Andreea Tomoiaga, 42 Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Hiring Agile Imposters represents the most important learnings of our more than 20 years combined hands-on experience with Kanban, Scrum, XP, and several product discovery frameworks. We have worked as Scrum Product Owners, Scrum Masters, agile coaches, and developers in agile teams and organizations of all sizes and levels of maturity.

We have each participated in interviewing dozens of Scrum Product Owner candidates on behalf of our clients or employers. The questions and answers herein are what we have learned.

TL;DR: 20 Questions to Ask the Product Owner to Get up to Speed as a New Scrum Master

From Scrum master to product owner, this set of questions addresses the future collaboration between the both and the rest of the team. The questions have been modeled after some basic principles, that high performing teams have in common. (You can read more on this topic in Marty Cagan’s post Product Success.)

20 questions for you — the new Scrum master — that fit into a 60 minutes time-box. Start learning how the new Scrum team is currently working and get up to speed. Download an easy printable template for your convenience.

Start Learning the Ropes in 60 Minutes

I was recently asked to participate in the product backlog grooming of a team that was looking for a new Scrum master. I was skeptical in the beginning. I had only limited knowledge about the project—a commercial website based on a CMS—, the grooming session was time-boxed to 60 minutes, and I hadn't met the team members before beyond a very brief "hello".

So, I prepared a questionnaire with topics I wanted to learn more about, and listened to the team grooming several user stories asking questions from the list when appropriate. Surprisingly, the insights turned out to be much more qualified than I expected. Particularly, the low-hanging (user story and Scrum improvement) fruits could be identified rather easily.